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Within the City of Portland, beavers are present in nearly all streams, sloughs, channels, and waterways and occasionally in the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Learn more about North America’s largest rodent on this page and what the City is doing to assist with beaver management.
Importance of Beavers in Our City
American beaver (Castor canadensis) are perhaps second only to humans in their ability to alter the environment. They live in ponds, swamps, marshes, and streams and are known for building dams across streams and other waterways. These dams create deep water for protection from predators, access to food and building supplies, and provide underwater entrances to dens and lodges. Because their dam-building activity can have such a transformative effect on the landscape, beavers are considered ecosystem engineers and keystone species. Beaver and their actions provide many valuable benefits. Beaver may:
- improve stream health and water quality;
- facilitate groundwater recharge;
- increase drought and wildfire resiliency;
- lessen the effects of floods and peak flow events;
- support biodiversity by creating new critical and essential habitat for many fish and wildlife species.
Because of these numerous benefits, Environmental Services employs a coexistence approach and strategy to beaver management.
The Beaver Management Plan
Despite their watershed health and ecological benefits, beaver can be a concern within urban settings because of the damage their activity can inflict on property and infrastructure. Environmental Services has developed a Beaver Management Plan containing best management practices to assist with the complexities of beaver management within Portland.
The guiding principle for this effort is Environmental Services’ mission: to manage Portland’s wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to protect public health and the environment. The management plan was also developed with Environmental Services’ goals to improve watershed health by enhancing hydrology, habitat, water and sediment quality, and biological communities. Given the assistance beaver provide toward these goals, their presence should be encouraged in areas that do not pose a risk to infrastructure or property.
Environmental Services believes that we reap multiple benefits when we work with nature. The core of the plan is to maintain beaver on the landscape whenever possible while creatively intervening to mitigate their unwanted impacts.
View the full Beaver Management Plan for more information on Environmental Services’ approach to beaver in Portland.